Blue vinyl piques my ears & this is weirdness indeed. Hey typical! furthers Todd Drootin’s exploration into his own unique mélange of IDM and country music. A dark, gritty feel rides dusky piano chords while drum-kit percussion plays background to obscure vocal & feedback samples. The flip is playable at either 33 or 45 breaks or d’n’b. Either way, the rolling paranoia found in the ubiquitous piano & Anton LeVay organ conjurs an American desert brimming with gun-toting rancheros. Perhaps Drootin is the Southern Twin to Canada’s Venetian Snares…

No Type has launched its first vinyl releases & they are keepers. Bonarelli investigates edgy, minimal beats with Consumer Culture and pays homage to revolution & Detroit on May ’68, with an electric-infused, beatless pattern of cascading & melodic rhythms (nods to Carl Craig). The flipside contains two further gems in the realm of atmospheric dub/techno. While Public Transportation is true dub BPM, the fade in-out of the 4/4 kick gives it a breathless pulse. Pop Summer Nights slices the ambient drones slowly, eventually brandishing its distant beats with a drifting mindfulness worthy of Chain Reaction.

5 new empreintes DIGITALes releases were set to the printer this morning: 3 CDs by Paul Dolden, the offical box of John Oswald’s Aparanthesi CD and Roxanne Turcotte’s second CD: Libellune!

New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) will celebrate 5 years of Sound Travels on August 9, 2003 at 2:30 pm at Centre Island, Toronto by presenting Francis Dhomont’s Here and There, Prince Prospero’s Party by Norway-based UK composer Natasha Barrett, Inside Out by Toronto composer Randall Smith, Temple by Vancouver’s Barry Truax, and works by Italian composers Laura Bianchini and Michelangelo Lupone.